That Time Takao Punched Akashi in the Face
by Galiko
Summary: Post Winter Cup. Midorima hasn't emerged from his room in days, and his mother is worried enough to call up that nice boy with a modern-sounding name. Takao is unhappy with what he finds, and the eight-hour round trip to Kyoto is suddenly very worth it. (Like it says on the tin, Takao punches Akashi in the face).


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Midorima's mother refers to Takao as 'that nice Korean boy', which is a joking reference to a head canon we have about Takao's grandfather (on his mother's side) being Korean. This would be a Big Deal [™] in Japan, especially to a very traditional family like Midorima's, who would easily equate even having just one relatively close foreign relative as making that person foreign as a whole. Poor Takao. The more you know!

It's been five days.

Midorima Mihoko tries the lock on Shintarou's door again, tries talking, tries everything, but to no avail. It's probably something to do with basketball, which immediately means he'll consider her too uneducated to give an opinion, but at least he usually talks to her when the problem is this bad. This...this is too long.

He'd left his phone in his jacket pocket, on the hook by the door, and after five days of not seeing her son, she goes through it, flipping through names she recognizes from middle school, settling on an oddly modern name she can never seem to remember, dialing and hoping this isn't an imposition too large he won't forgive her for it.

It's really the last phone call he expects to get, considering Shin-chan's silence for days on end. He never acts first, not in situations like this.

Even stranger is answering it, though, and finding that it isn't Shin-chan, but Shin-chan's _mother_. That's a new one. She gets his name wrong about five times (even though it's totally on Midorima's phone), but Takao forgives her for that when she all but begs him to come over and talk to her son.

Yeah. He can do that.

It's _awkward_, though, in ways Takao never has wanted anything between them to be. It still hurts, losing like they did, and it's all in the way that that son of a bitch Akashi _did it_ that still makes Takao's blood boil. He's definitely going to have to ask Midorima if he can punch the guy, and even if the answer is 'no', Takao is sure he's going to do it anyway.

Takao lingers outside the front door for a moment, tugging his earbuds from his ears before knocking, and sighs long and hard. Midorima has been _bad_ before, but not like this, _never_ to the point of his mother intervening (as far as Takao knows). He's gonna blame that all on Akashi, because he sure as hell had Shin-chan in _good_ shape before that match.

Mihoko opens the door before that nice Korean boy can knock, bowing and ushering him inside. "Please, come in-thank you for coming, I don't _like_ to interfere in Shintarou's life, but he hasn't been like this since his first year of middle school. Not since that Seijiirou boy told him about the horoscope and he had to reorder his life, really. Are you hungry?"

Ah. Yeah, he's totally gonna kill Akashi. Maybe he can run him over with his car. "Ah, no, thank you," Takao politely attempts, flashing her a smile as he steps inside and toes off his shoes. "I'd actually just like to see Shin-ch-uh, Shintarou, if that's okay? Maybe once I talk to him and calm him down a little…"

"Of course, this way." Mihoko leads him with quick light steps through the house, to the one overlooking the back garden. "This is his room. He's…" She lowers her voice, pulling out a silver key and turning it in the lock. "He hasn't been like this since middle school," she says again, hesitantly. "Before that, he was….he was a much more normal child, really. That's when the anxiety started, and all the counting, and the not sleeping."

And now the smile is much more forced, especially when Takao feels very inclined to punch a wall. _I _fixed_ all of that_ he wants to say, _to the point he didn't even talk about the damned zodiac at all during our match with Rakuzan. I had him happy, and not stressing out over every little thing, and he'd sleep on my shoulder in the damned _train_-_

"I'll talk to him," Takao reassures her, telling his rambling thoughts to shut up for just a few minutes. "Thank you for calling me, I really appreciate it."

Knocking is a courtesy, but Takao _knows_ Midorima isn't going to open the door on his own, and so he sticks his head in after that, blinking to adjust his eyes to dim light. Ugh. This is a little overdramatic, even for Shin-chan. "You're starting to freak me out a little," he mutters, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. "C'mon, Shin-chan, wakey wakey."

Midorima looks up, startled, from his desk. Analyses of Rakuzan's team, broken down into numbers, verses Shutoku, Kaijou, Touou, Seirin, Yousen, and at the bottom, Teiko all sprawl out, covered in the black scratches of his pen. One single light on his desk illuminates the entire room with 20 watts of electricity, and he hasn't taken his futon out of the drawer the entire time he's been in here. He's picked over the plates, eaten his favorite side dishes and stacked the plates neatly, and the curtain is drawn fast down. Nervous energy and exhaustion war in his body, and his bathroom door stands open, the number of wet towels evidence of many recent showers and baths.

"Takao? What are you doing here?" he asks, the sound of his own voice strange to him in the silence.

"Checking on you," Takao says, blinking slowly as he stares about the room, trying to even begin to process this level of… weird. "You didn't call me after the match… or for like, five days," he points out, lingering awkwardly near the door and stuffing his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. "I got worried." Better not to tell him that his own _mother_ got worried.

"You said you couldn't comfort me." Midorima pushes up his glasses, mind full of numbers, one hand protectively on a small brass-handled hairbrush, one finger stroking it sixteen times, pausing, then another sixteen times. "I hope you're more well than the last time we spoke."

"I meant like… right then." Takao heaves a sigh, daring to step further into the room. "I'm fine now. I mean, still pissed and everything, but I'm fine." _You're not._ He flops forward, giving up and simply draping his arms around Midorima's shoulders from behind, hooking his chin over one lean shoulder. "This is the kind of thing you need to let go, Shin-chan. It sucks, but we'll kick their asses next time, okay?"

"You know we won't." Midorima's shoulders are stiff, and there's an edge in his voice he almost never has around Takao. "We went as hard as we could. We worked together. We trusted each other and made every play we know how to make. As long as-as long as they have Akashi…"

His fingers curl into a fist around a shogi piece, feeling the corners bite into his flesh. "He'll never allow me to win."

It's worthless to try and reassure Midorima that they _will_ win, that they'll just work harder still, and they'll be even better later. He won't believe it, and so the words will sound empty and be entirely useless. Takao knows him well enough to know that. He falls silent for a moment before reaching forward with one hand, grabbing for Midorima's clenched fist to gently squeeze. "Your mom said that he's the one that got you kind of obsessed with the zodiac stuff." _What a bag of dicks._

"Yes. First year of middle school. He decided my momentary hesitation before shooting was due to my lack of faith." The tape itches around the fingers of his left hand, and Midorima slowly relaxes his hand, letting his fingers twine with Takao's. "I should have taken myself off the court when I knew Cancer's ranking. I'll apologize to the team on Monday for playing."

A low, annoyed noise catches in his throat. "Don't do that. You played really well, _all_ of us did, and it has nothing to do with your damned horoscope." Normally, Takao is content to humor that tic of Midorima's, but not right now. "That Akashi bastard is just… ugh. How would you feel about me punching him in the face?"

Midorima looks up, startled. "Why would you do that?" he asks, confused even at the question. "I was the weak one. I'm the one you should be angry with."

"The only thing I'm gonna be angry about is you thinking like that." Takao gives Midorima's hand a firm squeeze. "You were _amazing_. You're always amazing, but you were even _more_ amazing because I _know_ how hard it was for you to play against him. He's a total asshole, and he was playing mind games with you the whole time. That has nothing to do with basketball and he should fucking be ashamed of himself."

Midorima's wanted, for years now, to think of Akashi as something other than his Captain. He'd tried in middle school to think of him as a friend, as his mother had always referred to him, and in high school to think of him as a rival. It's never felt right. Akashi's easy dominance over him had always been….

He's _wanted_ it to be obnoxious.

It's just chilling.

He looks up at Takao, liking this angle, and slowly sets his lucky item on the desk, curling his fingers into Takao's shirt instead. "I should have known better than to stand against him. He always wins. I never...even now, I want to play him again, and win."

"We'll kick his ass next time." _Now_ he can say it, and maybe it'll mean something. Takao flops back, giving Midorima a solid pull to draw him better into his arms. "It'll be really awesome, you know-I'll just keep passing the ball to you and _he_ won't ever be able to touch it." _Fucking prick._ Those words _still_ irritate him. "There's nothing to _know better _about it, either. You _deserve_ to win against him-we all do. He just likes messing with people, and that's not what the game's about. If he was knocked down a peg and wasn't messing with our heads the whole time, it would've been a totally different game." Takao exhales a slow breath into the back of Midorima's neck. "I'm going to punch him in the face."

"It's really kind of a compliment," Midorima mutters, trying not to sound quite as shaken as he still is, quite as comforted by Takao's presence as he feels. "In most games he was the one who sat out for Kuroko. He didn't need to play."

He doesn't want to talk about Teiko days, really. He wants to rub his nose on Takao's collarbone, and does. "Your passing was perfect. If he hadn't been proving a point about me, everyone would have seen what a good point guard you are."

"He can take his compliments and shove them up his ass sideways." Takao thinks of himself as a pretty nice person, rare to toss around threats or vocalize his irritation past whining. Akashi _deserves it_, though. He's gotten Shin-chan this shaken up, this twitchy and unhinged, and Takao _hates it_. His arms squeeze tighter still. "Wouldn't be anywhere near as good without you," he mumbles, butting his face down into Midorima's hair. "I'm so mad still. He didn't have to do any of that, he just needed to play the _game_ and not be an asshole."

"He doesn't care about basketball." That, probably, is the thing that bothers Midorima the most. "He never has. If there had been a Shogi tournament that Teiko was world-famous for, he'd have led that instead. Three hundred years ago, he'd have been a warlord." He takes a deep breath, blinking out tears of frustration because it's not _fair_ that he'll always lose to Akashi at the one thing he loves more than anything, when Akashi doesn't even care. "He's...not like us."

"Then he'll lose, because we're _better_ than that." Takao's pretty sure he's hugging Midorima's head now, squishing him maybe too tightly to his chest, but he doesn't exactly hear any complaints, so he doesn't stop. "Way better. We'll take him down a dozen pegs and then a dozen more after that. You just _can't_ be the best at something if you don't care about it, it doesn't work that way. And hey, now I know how he operates, so I'll be a lot more prepared next time. He's not magic, he's just an arrogant little shit that's mad everyone is taller than him."

That's the first time Midorima has laughed in any way since losing, and he does it wetly against Takao's chest. "That's why he chose basketball, I'm sure," he mutters, giving up and wrapping both of his arms around Takao's midsection, pulling him closer. "No one could call him insecure about it if he purposely surrounded himself with people like myself and Murasakibara. He loves turning supposed weaknesses into advantages." He pauses, then adds, "You don't treat it like a weakness. And it isn't, for you. Remind me to add that to the list."

"I like it when you add things to the list." Takao tips his head down, pressing another kiss to the top of Midorima's head. "He's a dumbass. Seriously, I'm faster than all of you, and if I think I can't make a shot because I'm surrounded by ridiculously tall guys, I pass it to you. His solution is… make people fall over. That's _not_ basketball. That's stupid." Takao pauses thoughtfully. "Also, I guarantee he can't pull off a cheerleading outfit."

The thought actually makes Midorima shudder. "I don't want to see anyone in that kind of thing but you." He turns his head, looking up through blurry vision. "I'm only a pervert for Takao, I think."

"Good, I don't want you to be a pervert for anyone else." Ugh, he's mad about how shaken up Shin-chan looks still. Takao slides his hands up the side of his face, giving his cheeks a gentle squish before hooking his fingers into his glasses to ease them off. "No crying, either," he grumbles, dragging a thumb over one thick line of lashes. "Unless I'm like… shoving you into a bed and you're enjoying yourself so much you can't help it. That's a good thing."

Ah, Midorima's eyes _hurt_ when the glasses come off, proof that it's been far too long since he's slept. "No bed here," he says, something like an apology. "And I-the walls are Japanese." His cheeks burn, the closest he'll come to admitting that when Takao touches him, he loses even the ability to keep quiet. "But you could stay anyway."

"We'll save that for later, when you come over to my place. I miss having Shin-chan to keep me company." Takao leans down, pressing a kiss this time to one closed eyelid. "I think you'd fall asleep before I even got it in right now, though. Not sexy. Hey, want me to get your futon out? I'll stay if you want me to."

Midorima nods, sagging back into the uncomfortable wooden chair. "I think so. It's been-what day is it?" How many hours has it been, or has it been days? "Come to think of it, Mother's given me quite a lot of food for two days."

"… You're going to bed, yep." Takao gives him another squeeze before releasing him to go and drag the futon out. "And I'm gonna curl up and keep you warm while you do it. You need a nice, long sleep. Then we'll go out to eat at your favorite sushi place, okay?"

That sounds _good_. Midorima stands, looking down at himself and feeling slightly surprised to see his jersey. He strips it off, vaguely considers another shower, but there are no more dry towels. He stretches out, blinking up at Takao and reaching out for him. "It's too cold here without you."

"Shin-chan's house _is_ cold," Takao agrees, happily flopping down next to him and burying himself into Midorima's chest. This is _much_ better. Maybe once Shin-chan has some sleep under his belt, he'll be a little less twitchy. _Then I can take off for a day and repeatedly punch Akashi's face in. _"Don't worry, I'll stay until you get sick of me."

"I'm always sick of you." Hesitantly, already fading, Midorima brushes a kiss against Takao's hair. "So I suppose by now I'm immune."

"… That's really not fair," Takao mumbles, huffily butting his face into Midorima's neck. Geez, that sort of thing is bad for his heart. Oh well; if he's gonna die, like this is good.

So when he said he was going to go and punch Akashi in the face, he really meant it.

If he wasn't trying to make a statement out of this, he would have taken the train. It's only about 2 hours that way (especially on a school day), but there's something to be said about waiting out in front of Rakuzan High outside of his own car, looking _really badass_.

It's definitely worth the extra two hours of driving to get there, at any rate.

Takao has resigned himself to getting into trouble in about a dozen ways. He's also resigned himself to _not caring_, because how in the world is he supposed to let it slide that Akashi is such a little shit to _his boyfriend?_ He hasn't asked specifics, but he's heard enough from Midorima's mother, inferred enough through the things Midorima's said, and so he knows this has gone on for a really, really long time, that's _not okay._

It's best just to be direct, and let Akashi know that with a fist to the face.

The problem with the Emperor's Eye, of course, is that Akashi needs to _use_ it to see the future.

It's only after he's on the ground, pain making his vision blur, that he has any idea the gesture would have been necessary. His friends (followers), of course, are picking him up off the ground by the time he realizes he's been hit, forming a protective onslaught in front of him that he stops with a single, curious word.

He walks forward, eyes bright and intense no matter one of them is already swelling, locked on the angry young teenager facing him. "Takao Kazunari. Shutoku's number ten. Point Guard." His smile gets sharp, amused. "Shintarou's keeper. You're a long way from home."

Oh, god, he wants to hit him again already. Just once is far from enough.

"You are _seriously_ not allowed to call him so familiarly," Takao snaps instead, shaking out his hand and using his superior height (all three centimeters of it) to loom over the other boy. "What the hell is wrong with you, anyway? Don't _smile_ when someone punches you, especially when you deserve it."

"That's very demanding of you," Akashi remarks, more amused with every moment. "Did Shintarou-no, of course he didn't send you." His eyes gleam, lips parting to show teeth. "He knows his place beneath me better than that."

He _really_ can't be held responsible for his actions when Akashi is such a dick.

Takao doesn't think before he punches again-the other eye this time, now he can have a matching goddamn _set_-and he follows _after_ the hit, quite aware that he's got a few pairs of hands trying to haul him off while he's digging a knee into the son of a bitch's stomach. "If you _ever _say that again-" Actually, he's not that good at throwing threats around. The running-Akashi-over-with-his-car thing sounds great, but doesn't quite roll off the tongue. Takao gives up and hits him again.

The next pair of arms that grab Takao are larger, hairier, and then Takao's being hoisted into the air by two of Rakuzan's biggest players, two meters of muscle lifting him on either side with a roar.

"Enough!"

Before Akashi can bark out the word himself, Kyoto-sensei is on the scene, and the players release the intruder immediately. "Akashi, Nebuya, Hayama, in my office. You-are you a student?"

Takao can't help but be _very_ pleased with himself. He _never_ gets into fist fights-never starts them, never joins in-but hey, he's coming away from this one clean, and Akashi's the one that looks scuffed up all to hell and bruised.

It is _so_ worth the trouble he's getting into, especially because Akashi's going to suffer through it, too.

"No, sir." He should probably try and sound a bit more ashamed of himself. Oops. "I'm Takao Kazunari, Shuutoku High." Yeah, there's no apology there, either.

"Sore loser, eh?" Kyoto-sensei asks, and grabs him by the neck, hauling him to the office with the rest of them, shoving him to the floor where Nebuya and Hayama are already kneeling. Akashi, by contrast, is leaning back against one wall, arms folded over his chest and looking bored, if bruised.

"This was a disgusting display!" he begins, glaring down at all of them. "The kind of petty brawling I would expect from children, not from sportsmen! Every last one of you must be ashamed of himself, and don't think that's the last of it! Shutoku, there's a phone on the desk. Call your Kouchou-sensei immediately, tell him what you did."

Normally, Takao would roll over and play dead. Not today-especially when he's already in trouble. "Not a sore loser, sir," Takao _cheerfully_ pipes up as he trots over to the phone. "Far from it. It was a great game. I just really don't like _Sei-chan_ at all."

At that, even Kyoto-sensei looks a bit nervous, eyes darting to Akashi to make sure he's not too angry. There's a _twitch_, but he doesn't think it's quite advanced to a "my parents are going to sue this school" twitch, so for the moment he lets it pass. "Get back on the ground when you're finished, I'm not even _close_ to through with you."

"I'm leaving," Akashi says, peeling himself off the wall. "You can put your tirade in writing and send it to my home. I'll make sure you're rewarded for pulling this dangerous young hooligan off of me."

He pauses before leaving, adding, "Will this be some time? I may need to visit Tokyo to return the favor. I'm certain I still know certain ways in and out of Shintarou's old home."

Yeah, he's already in a lot of fucking trouble, so who even cares anymore. Takao casually drops the phone, turns around, and launches himself back at Akashi to give him another solid wallop to the face.

"'m absolute," Akashi mutters, a little taken aback as he ducks not quite in time. That's it, next time he's using his Emperor's Eye whenever this little shit is anywhere near him. "You're making it much worse for yourself. Before, I would have been content with crushing you in basketball." His eyes flare, and he takes a step forward, no trace of a smile left on his face. "Now I'm going to destroy everything you love. I'm taking the day off, Kyoto-sensei."

He strides out the door, leaving a trail of cold in his wake.

_Bring it on, you little shit._

Midorima might be scared of him, but Takao isn't. He probably should be, but he probably should have been scared of Midorima when they met, too, and if he _had_ been…

Yeah, not thinking about how that would have changed things.

"Coach? Yes, sir, it's Takao. I'm down in Kyoto, at Rakuzan…"

When all is said and done, Takao cheerfully realizes the next couple of months of his life are going to be somewhat hellish. Worth it, so worth it, especially when he still can't help but _bounce_ into practice the next day (even after being yelled at a dozen times over by their coach prior). Maybe he should tone it down, just a little bit, or at least act marginally sheepish around _Midorima_. Maybe.

Midorima waits until after practice to say something, feeling oddly hesitant to say anything at all. Takao is so _happy_, and they've had their first good practice since losing to Rakuzan, and he'd even slept the night before. Oha Asa had warned him-

"_Lucky Cancer! That special someone is getting ready to fight for your honor, so make sure you're ready with a biiiiiiiig kiss!"_

He usually waits until after they're through showering, and now waits longer, silently beginning to mop the floors along with Takao. "I have a present for you. After we're through."

Takao blinks over at him, pausing in his task. "So… that means you're _not_ mad at me?" he hedges, trying not to grin just yet. "In case you were wondering, he didn't get a single hit on me, nor was he very good at dodging. So much for telling the future."

"Mad?" Midorima pushes up his glasses, then makes certain they're alone before leaning over, butting his head against Takao's shoulder. "No. I knew you would do something, Oha Asa told me so. I was just worried you'd get hurt."

Takao chokes on a laugh. "You're kidding, right? That little shit can't fight at _all_. I'm not very good at it myself, so that's saying something!" He grins outright now, butting his head back against Midorima's. "He was so maaaad. God, I hope those black eyes last a long time, I gave him one for every time he said your name, and then a bloody lip for good measure."

"I-" Midorima swallows, a little nervous just at the _idea_ of getting into a physical altercation against Akashi. Takao is braver than he'd anticipated, and also a lot more violent.

It sort of makes him smile.

"Why were you offended about his use of my name?" he asks, curious. "He always does that to everyone. He started before he made me Vice-Captain in Teiko." True, it had always grated on him, but no more than anyone else, he imagines.

"Because it's _creepy_," Takao complains with a huff, straightening to mop the floor with much more gusto now. "The fact you never protest it and you yell at me all the time still for 'Shin-chan' is just weird, you know? It's forced intimacy and all that, he's just trying to control you in another way. Ahhh, I really hate that guy!"

Ah, Midorima doesn't really want to explain that you just _don't protest_ against Akashi, but that sounds….

He sighs, pushing up his glasses and putting more energy into his own efforts. "Anything I say will make me sound like a coward after today. Or maybe just sane. Whatever's the opposite of you. I bought you a present."

"I don't think you're a coward, or crazy." Well, maybe a little crazy. "It's hard dealing with people like that." Takao blows a strand of hair out of his face, leaning against the handle of his mop. "Anyway, you didn't have to get me anything, but I'm really happy you did! Is it a reward for being Shin-chan's gallant knight?"

"Mm. Oha Asa said you'd fight for my honor today. I got you a pair of gloves. They're red. For passion." Midorima's voice doesn't change, deep and even, and he hands over a wrapped package. "Also because red is lucky for you today."

Maybe there is something to that horoscope mess after all. "Yeah? It was pretty lucky when I made his face bleed." Takao spares a hasty glance around once more before abandoning his mop and stretching up on wobbly tiptoes to steal a kiss as he takes the package. "Shin-chan spoils me today. Maybe I should defend your honor more often."

Midorima's face turns approximately the same color as the gloves, and he steals one more kiss. "Was that large enough? It said to give you a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig kiss."

Oh, no, Shin-chan is _way_ too cute today. Takao swallows, huffs, and promptly gives into the urge to bounce up with his arms around Midorima's neck and his legs tightly wound about his waist. "Try it again," he cheerfully suggests. "While I'm gluing myself to you like this."

"You said only behind closed doors," Midorima protests, but he doesn't sound terribly put out. There are doors, and they're closed, even if they're not locked, but no one is likely to come in at this point. Ah, well, it's really Takao that it would be a problem for. He's the one with popularity to lose.

He bends his head, rubbing a taped finger over Takao's headband as he meets his lips, trying to decide what makes a biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig kiss different from a regular one. Length? Intensity? Mouth positioning? Hopefully Takao will stop kissing him when it's biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig enough.

Driving eight hours round trip to punch a guy in the face for his boyfriend was _so worth it_.

Takao makes a low, happy noise in the back of his throat, giving Midorima's neck a squeeze as he enjoys kissing him a few times over before drawing back with a nip and suck to that bruised lower lip. "I _guess_ that was biiiiiiiiiiig enough." _Thank you, Oha Asa._ "I don't think these have to happen only on special occasions, though. I like climbing Shin-chan like a ladder."

"Is that a fetish of yours?" Midorima asks, not entirely sure whether he should encourage it or shoot it down. "That's another list I want you to make for me, by the way." He reaches down, cupping Takao's right hand in his left, frowning slightly. "You're hurt. Is his face that solid?" Even the idea of Akashi being punched sends an apprehensive shiver through him.

Takao slowly, reluctantly unwinds himself, dropping back onto his feet with a sigh. "Nah. He's actually kinda squishy. I just hit him really hard." He grins, wriggling his fingers a bit. "I hope those black eyes give him trouble for a few weeks."

"A good thing they don't have any games with us for the next couple of weeks," Midorima remarks, brushing a thumb over the marks. "When we beat him, I want it to be because we're better, one hundred percent."

_That's_ the Shin-chan that he wants so badly, not the neurotic mess relying on horoscopes and fate rather than his pure skill and damn _good_ teammates. "Yeah, really good. I'm gonna laugh when they play in the finals, though, and he's still got a black eye. Uhh… though you'll have to take video for me, I think I'm barred from going," he sheepishly admits.

"Don't be ridiculous, I'm not going. I have no interest in watching someone else play when I could be spending time honing my craft." He's _definitely_ not going to go this time. "I'll tell Kise to take a picture for me, he has no self-restraint when it comes to attending things like that. Put your mop away, it's as clean as you're going to get it."

"Well, if you're _definitely_ not going, then we'll go somewhere fun for the weekend instead." Assuming the coach doesn't make him come and clean on the weekends, too. Takao wouldn't put it past him (even though the man had given him a sort of stiff nod of approval that Takao took to mean 'if I wasn't your coach, I'd probably high five you like I know the rest of your teammates will when my back is turned'). "Or just sit around and eat good food, whatever."

"We're going to Edo sushi tonight," Midorima says firmly, tugging Takao out the door and towards the rickshaw. "You're buying it for me. And I'm going to eat the end pieces. Akashi always made us throw them away, he said they were irregularly sized and threw off digestion."

"He's such a weirdo," Takao laughs, happily throwing his bag into the rickshaw. "You eat all the kinds of sushi you want. I like watching you eat a lot and then pass out on my shoulder afterwards."

"It always hurts my neck when I pass out on you. You're too short. Sai-sho waguu, janken pon." Fate tells him to throw rock.

It's sort of reflex at this point to throw scissors. "Why are you so good at this," Takao half-heartedly sighs, and flops down into the bike seat. "You're the tall one, shrink already. Except don't."

Midorima climbs into the cart, a look of smug superiority on his face. "Fate isn't something to leave up to chance. Besides, you always throw scissors." The more he tells Takao that, the more he throws it next time. Takao psyches himself out a lot. More and more over the past few months, Midorima has found little explanations for things he's always attributed to fate, which really shows just how clever fate is.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say." The only annoying thing about this is that Midorima is _heavy _to drive around, but Takao has just learned to appreciate this as extra strength training. "Just sit back there and look pretty, Princess; your meal awaits."


End file.
